


Waking Up

by orphan_account



Series: saimami week 2020 :D [5]
Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Everyone’s alive, Heavy V3 Spoilers, M/M, Memory, Nonbinary Amami Rantaro, Pining, Roommates, Simulation AU, kirumi and tenko are two of rantaro’s sisters, mostly bc i refuse to believe everyone is dead, shuichi is kinda impulsive, that sounds cryptic it’s not, ”alive”
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:33:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23234776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Shuichi, Himiko, and Maki win the game. And that’s when they wake up.
Relationships: Amami Rantaro/Saihara Shuichi, Saihara Shuichi/Amami Rantaro
Series: saimami week 2020 :D [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1666096
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	Waking Up

Crouching, Shuichi stared at the hole in the dome. Light flooded through that dome--brighter than any star in that false sky he had ever seen. Maki was helping Himiko up from the rock she had fallen on. When up, the other two stared at the hole as well. Static covered the image; they were talking. About something. Not clear what. But they looked at each other, nodded, and took a step toward that broken dome. To a new world.

Shuichi’s eyes flashed open.

A doctor was looming over him, face covered with a surgical mask. It reminded Shuichi of Ouma when he woke him up in Gonta’s lab once. Muffled voice came out of the mask--something about them waking up correctly? His brain was too foggy to tell.

He drifted back off. He could deal with this tomorrow.

The detective woke up again. This time with smelling salts shoved up his nose.

He coughed at the feeling; not often you wake up with being seasoned like a salad. This time, a nice looking nurse was standing over him. She kinda looked like his mom, for some reason. Same golden eyes that matched his, probably. And her hair looked thin like his, cut into a cute little bob that sort of looked like Himiko’s. That made it worse, actually. Since she had left him when he was little for some acting job. Stupid.

But while resembling his mother...she seemed warmer. Like she cared about him. That was nice. Shuichi resisted the urge to fall asleep again in the hands of his “mom.” That would probably only serve to make this nice woman angry. And he didn’t want to make someone he just met upset.

“Rise and shine, little patient,” she whispered. Her smile was warm; she must really like her job. Wow, she even sounded like his mom. That was nice. Pretend he could see her again. Though his mother was fictional, wasn’t she? Fabricated for a past he didn’t actually have. But he must have a mom somewhere. Maybe this was her. “It’s time to see your friends.”

“Huh? Friends?” Shuichi slurred. How long had he been out? He was in a hospital bed, from the looks of it. The white sheets and rails on the bed proved that much. And there was an IV drip to his right, just to solidify the theory. They really weren’t leaving anything up to his intuition, huh? But something seemed off--what, exactly he couldn’t tell. Maybe it was the fact the drip was just...sitting there. With no purpose other than to bring the scene together. Or maybe it was that terrifyingly large helmet stationed on the bedside table. That as probably a big hint. “What do you mean?”

“Hm? You don’t know?” She cocked, her head, her thin hair swaying. “The doctor from before didn’t explain it to you?”

“The--the one with the mask?” Shuichi clutched his head. Headache. He hadn’t had one of those from trying to remember since the beginning of the game. That was so long ago… “N-no, sorry. I fell asleep again.” He looked around the room. This was a hospital, wasn’t it? It looked like one on the surface, it did, but something was...lacking. Something the detective couldn’t put his finger on. Some detective Shuichi was. Also, that helmet was really suspicious. “Where am I, anyway? Is this the other world? From when we beat the game? We were heading out of the dome when I woke up…Is this heaven? Am I--” he gulped. Wow, he didn’t want this possibility to be real-- “am I dead?”

The nurse’s eyes got big--Shuichi noticed the name tag: Yamamoto--before she started laughing. Her laugh was jingling and loud--really loud. Yamamoto was laughing so hard she dropped the smelling salts on the ground (she was still carrying those?) and whispered, “Shit.” though she didn’t stop laughing. Shuichi started sweating--did he say something wrong? Why was she laughing so much? What did he do? Why was she doing this?

When she recovered, she waved her hands. “Sorry, sorry, honey, just--you think you could be dead? You won the game!”

“A-ahh...but still-”

She stood up and began to pick up the salts. “Mm...no worries. I can explain what’s going on.

Everything you’ve experienced has been a simulation. The 53rd killing game was like--kinda like a virtual reality. You’ve been plugged up for a few hours or so, give or take. It’s felt like a week for you, sure, but somehow the producers found an algorithm that lets you stay plugged in for a few hours to get all the show time they need. Amazing, isn’t it? And just for some television program a bunch of nerds like! Ah, no offense or anything, I know you were big on it before this took place.” She shot him an apologetic glance--she must’ve been referencing that video Tsumugi had shown--as she dumped the salts in the trash by the door and continued, pacing around the room as she went. “Anyway, as people died, they woke up here! And as you and the other two girls had won, you were the last three to wake up! So, right now, you’re at what could be called, uh...the shooting zone?”

She finished her speech at the end of Shuichi’s bed, giving an over dramatic turn and grasping the bars with her hands. “We’ve all been rooting for you back here! You had such amazing development, Mr. Detective.”

Shuichi blinked, taking in the story, as the nurse rambled on about how some other worker was sure he wouldn’t make it to the end, but she was sure, she always knew he had it in him. “S-so, this is...the real world? I’m not dead?” 

“Huh? Oh, no, sweetie, you’re not dead. You made it to the end! Amazing! Now, would you like to see your friends? They’re all out there!” She smiled warmly at him, walking back over to the side of his bed and offering an arm for him to hold. “Your legs might be just a touch wobbly, since you haven’t stood in a few hours.”

“Ah...thank you, miss.” He took the arm gratefully and pulled himself up from the bed. She was right. His legs wobbled more than a scared kitten as she walked him out of the blank, white room, with that helmet. Assumably, that was the VR set that took him to that school.

Going through white hallways was terrifying. The supposed set was all white, with oversaturated lights tacked onto the ceiling like that of a school. Haunting, it was. After a bit of walking, Shuichi let go of the nurse’s arm, having regained the leg strength to do so. Had it only been a few hours? It felt like a lifetime. It was impossible to fit so much into a few hours, right? Though anything was possible, with how the game turned out.

Passing blank room after blank room, Shuichi felt like he had entered an abandoned hospital rather than a set. With only his own footsteps and Yamamoto’s heels clacking on the tile floor as sound, it really did sound like they had entered a ghost hospital. Like one in a horror video game, where a zombie was going to poke its head out at any second. Scary.

“We’re almost there, honey,” Yamamoto said, seeming to notice Shuichi’s anxious thoughts. Shuichi flinched at the sound of her voice in the quiet hallway, and nodded afterwards. She pointed to the door at the end of the corridor. “That’s where all your friends are.”

Shuichi’s eyes grew, and so did his hope. But that was too good to be true. She couldn’t be alive. She couldn't. She had died in front of everyone (well, except for one person, who he was also anxious to see, but that wasn’t the point). Yamamoto seemed to read his thoughts again. “Yes, even her.”

Shuichi looked at the nurse, almost asking for permission. She nodded, giving the detective all the permission he needed. He took off running down the empty hall. Feet pattering down the hallway, he kept going. He couldn’t let this go. This was his chance. It had been so long...she had saved him, for God’s sake! He needed to see her. Make sure she was really there.

He reached the door in record’s time. He put his hand on the door knob, but hesitated a second. He turned around, and Yamamoto was waving from him from the hallway encouragingly. That was all he needed, and he pushed the door in.

And she was sitting right there.

Kaede’s golden hair was hard to miss, especially with the bit that always stood up. Her back was to him, of course, and she turned at the sound of the door opening. Her violet eyes were bright and full of color, no longer lifeless like she was from the rope on the piano. Her neutral face grew to a smile at the sight of him. She looked...tired. But she was sitting right there.

Shuichi ran to her and rammed into her, tears falling down his face. She was here! Right here! No longer dead! She was perfect and fine, and not dead. She was alive! He hugged her tighter than he thought humanly possible, sobbing into her shoulder. The pianist coddled him, rubbing his back as he let that week’s emotions run through him again. She had done so much, and just as quickly, disappeared.

After running out of tears, he pulled back. Kaede smiled at him as she looked up at him. “Hey, Shuichi. Been a while, huh?”

“Been a while? I thought you died!” He cried. “You can’t just--miraculously show up again and say that, Kaede!”

“Yeah, yeah. My bad.” She smiled. “Sorry I lied.”

“Oh, God, that doesn’t matter now. You know that!” Shuichi started tearing up again. “I thought--I thought I lost you!”

“Oh, pshh. You can’t get rid of me that easily, Shuichi.” She snickered. 

“Yeah, but--but--”

“Shh...it’s okay. I’m teasing.” And she pulled him back into a hug.

When Kaede had finished doting on him (more like Shuichi had stopped doting on Kaede to make sure she was really, really there), she had ushered him off to see everyone else. Everyone else was okay, really. A couple had rocky conversations, or were in a heated argument--Tenko was trying to get Kiyo to “square up” for “using a backhanded plot to kill her, just like men always do,” Gonta was sobbing and hugging Miu, who was screaming, and wailing about how he was sorry about hurting her (Miu was squeaking like some sort of mouse at that), Maki was sobbing into Kaito’s chest, and Kaito really couldn’t tell why she was being so open about her feelings like that, and Tsumugi and Ouma seemed to be having a discussion of sorts, even though they were back to back and staring at opposite sides of the room--but all in all, everyone was themselves. It was...nice, to see, really.

Though Shuichi couldn’t work up the gut to talk to someone. Eventually Kaede noticed (nothing got by her, did it?).

“Hey, Shu-Shu!” She waved him over to one of the couches. The pianist had this...look on her face. It was one of the pesky ones the detective had seen previously when she had started squishing Tsumugi’s cheeks when they met. He hesitantly walked over to her, fearing what she might say. She patted at the seat next to her, and the two sat and watched the chaos in the room, and kept silent. Shuichi pulled on the collar of his plain button down--everyone had the same one, and they all had the same pants, too. Wow, he was sweating up a storm. “Why do you keep avoiding Rantaro?” Kaede asked innocently.

Shuichi coughed--yes he was expecting the question, but not out of the blue like that. Kaede was full of surprises, wasn’t she? “Uh, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He feigned ignorance.

“Yes, you do! You’ve been avoiding him since we all woke up...now that I think about it, you avoided him while we were in the game, too.”

“Them,” Shuichi corrected.

“Huh? He’s--I mean, their, sorry--non-binary?”

“Yeah..?”

“Oh...they never told me...and we spent all that time together, too!” Kaede pouted. “I think that shows how much they like you, Shuichi. You should confess.”

Shuichi choked on his own spit. “I--what? Confess what?” He hoped his voice wasn’t too squeaky as he spoke.

“What, you think I’m completely dense, Shuichi? It’s pretty obvious when you have a crush, even if I was only there for the very beginning. You can’t hide your feelings for the world,” Kaede declared.

“God--can you not talk about it so loudly, at least?”

“Oh, sure, sure. But you really should tell hi--them.” Kaede patted Shuichi’s back before standing up and running toward Miu, who was currently running from Ouma, who was torturing her with something. Shuichi didn’t care to know what.

After staying for about a week in the hospital/set/whatever you wanted to call it, the cast was deemed ready to return back to reality, though mandatory that you stick with at least one other person, just to monitor each other. Since everything seemed fine, however, it was just a precaution, but things had happened in prior seasons when trying to reincorporate the contestants into society, so it was mandatory.

One by one, Shuichi saw his friends partner up on that fateful day. He could ask anyone, he knew, since they all trusted him and believed him to be their friend, but there was just something that told him he couldn’t. And nobody immediately ran over to him (except Ouma, who then immediately insisted he was lying and scampered off to partner with Tsumugi. Seemed they had made some sort of bond), so that something told him he couldn’t ask anybody. Stupid anxiety.

Though it seemed someone else was having a similar problem. (Kaede noticed too--nothing slipped past that girl, huh?--and she gave him a reassuring thumbs up as she took Miu’s hand.)

Taking in a shaky breath, the detective walked over to the lone survivor.

Oh, how twisted fate was.

“H-hey,” Shuichi stammered looking at them. “Do you, uh, wanna partner up? Since, uh, nobody else can…”

Rantaro looked at the anxious boy. Wow, their green eyes were pretty. They looked like daisy meadows in the peak of spring. They shrugged. “Sure, I don’t see why not. It’ll be fun, Sushi.”

Oh my god, they had a nickname for him.

“A-ah...okay.”

And thus, they got shipped off to an apartment together. Alone. Sharing it with nobody else.

Shuichi was going to combust one of these days, he really was.

Shuichi always hated moving--it took too long and you put all your stuff in a box only to take it out again and put it somewhere else. It was so time consuming. Packing was an annoying necessity. Though this time he had nothing to pack, so maybe it wasn’t that bad. But trying to figure out the layout of your new place was always a pain, and getting used to where you put furniture and dealing with stubbed toes until then was irritating.

Maybe he should’ve just stayed in that simulation to leave the annoying things in life behind.

Grumbling, he took the keys he had been carefully given (“Don’t lose them,” Rantaro had warned. “I have the only other key, other than the one at the front desk, and you don’t want to be locked out until I come back from whatever job I’ll be hired for. Or have to go and ask the woman at the front desk for the spare key. I know you hate stuff like that.”) and opened the door. “I’m home,” he called.

His partner was already inside the apartment, sitting at the bar in the kitchen, staring at their phone. “Welcome back, Sushi,” they greeted.

Shuichi closed the door tightly behind him, kicking off his shoes at the door and entering the new place. It was really nice, with hardwood floors all the way through and nice granite counters. It looked like the place you only ever saw on those house hunting shows. It must’ve been terribly expensive, but the company was paying for it thanks to the “work they had put into the 53rd and final season.”

Nobody’s memory from before the game had come back, and for that, Shuichi was grateful. He didn’t want that...monster from that video to come back. The one who would kill at any cost to win. The one that probably even wanted to be executed. What a freak he had once been. The ex-Ultimate Detective was glad that thing was never coming back (he hoped it never came back, at least).

“What do you wanna do tonight?” Rantaro asked. “We just moved in and all. We should celebrate.”

Shuichi sighed. “I don’t know, Taro--oh my god, I just said that, didn’t I?” Shuichi’s eyes flashed open. He was really slipping up if he was letting his stupid nickname for his crush slip out. “I’m so sorry. I won’t say it again. God, you think I’m weird, don’t you? It’s such a weird nickname, too, I--”

“Hey, hey, you’re fine, Sushi. It’s not like I don’t have one for you, too.” Rantaro smiled. “I think it’s cute.”

Shuichi blushed. Rantaro thought he was cute. Oh my god. “O-okay...but yeah, I, uh, don’t know...I’m not a good cook…”

“Oh! I am!” Rantaro smiled. “At least, I think I am...me in that world was, at least. That should apply here, too, right?” That smile faltered.

“...We can get take-out, if you’re nervous about it.”

“Ah...that’d be nice.”

After dinner (which was, in fact, Chinese take-out), Shuichi wandered out to the balcony of the new place. It overlooked a river that flowed and swirled. Doing his best not to let his mind wander too far back into what happened, he watched the people from the balcony. As the apartment was on a higher up floor (fourth, he believed, but he’d have to check), it was easy to see them wander the streets. They kinda looked like tiny ants wandering the streets.

Rantaro joined the detective on the balcony, leaning on the railing. As they looked into the setting sun, they spoke. “Do you remember when we were trapped in that school?”

Shuichi scoffed and rolled his eyes, taking his eyes off the tiny people and to his partner. “Taro, I don’t think I can, even if I want to.”

“Well, of course not, none of us can. Silly question. But, uh, do you remember that dumb promise we made?”

Shuichi paused. Dumb promise? There was no promise he made with Rantaro that was dumb. Everything he promised to his partner was true and serious. But...they did have that habit of making themselves sound….dumber? (They really needed to cut that habit of self-deprecating one of these days.) Though this was serious—or when they made the promise it was. Would the survivor—was Rantaro to be called a survivor at this point? Nobody had ultimate talents, it turned out, but their personality stayed the same. Still that travel-craving, self-sacrificing idiot that can’t see their own worth—really joke about something this serious? But Shuichi decided to bite the bullet. If Rantaro yelled at the detective, so be it. “Oh...your sisters?”

“Yeah! seems kinda silly now, knowing I don’t have any to rescue. who knew two of them would be among us, huh?”

Oh, right. “Yeah...I didn’t expect you, Kirumi, and Tenko to be related back in real life.” Shuichi looked toward the setting sun. “...I didn’t even know there was a real world. Never...would’ve guessed we were in a simulation all that time…”

“Yeah, neither could I...never would’ve crossed my mind. Even with that video I was gifted from that version of me.” They shook their head. “Do you think I changed much from that edition of myself?”

“Ah...I don’t know...I haven’t had the gut to watch season fifty-two…Plus, we were warned against watching or doing anything that could make us remember too much.”

“Yeah, but...I wonder if I’ve changed too much...like, if me from fifty-two would like this me. Or if they’d hate me.”

“...I don’t think anybody could hate you, Taro.” Shuichi looked to his partner. They stared at each other’s eyes for a minute--golden sun against grassy meadows. “At least...I couldn’t.”

Rantaro stayed silent for a minute, before closing their eyes and laughing, flushed face highlighting freckles that danced across their face. “That’s...really embarrassing. I can’t believe you’d say something like that.” They leaned their hand out to ruffle Shuichi’s hair (which had turned out to be dyed, and you could see his roots peeking through).

“H-hey! It took a lot of guts to say that…” Shuichi was blushing, too, now.

“Well, if it reassures you any--” Rantaro opened their eyes again and looked into Shuichi’s-- “I don’t think I could find it in me to hate you, either.”

Shuichi’s eyes grew at that. Oh. Wow. He...wow. How do you come back from that?

“Ah, sorry. Was that weird?” Rantaro asked. “I’m not very good at reading moods...maybe me from before was better--”

“I--I...thank you, Taro.” Shuichi smiled--one bigger than he had ever had. Even bigger than when he realized Kaede was still alive. “It was great. You’re fine. I wouldn’t want past you back for everything in the world.” And Shuichi did something stupid he’d probably regret in the morning, but so be it.

He leaned over and kissed Rantaro’s forehead. “Good night, Taro,” he said (hopefully it wasn’t too high-pitched) and headed to his new bedroom.

**Author's Note:**

> uggghhhgggbhhsbsjshs this wasn’t supposed to be this long!!!!! it wasn’t!!!!!!!! but i kept going!!!!!!!!! i just wanted to play animal crossing but NO i decided to write a 3.5k word fic of shuichi being a dumbass!!!!!!!!!  
> kaede’s kinda ooc but this story ain’t about her so u know what. fuck u
> 
> the pacing is wack im srry
> 
> im going to go play animal crossing now


End file.
